


AmporaQuest

by Laskara



Category: Classical Greece and Rome History & Literature RPF, Homestuck
Genre: Aggressively American author, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2020-07-25 12:09:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20025592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laskara/pseuds/Laskara
Summary: The sequel to CronusQuest. The following fanfiction contains coarse language and, due to its content, should not be read by anyone.





	1. Cronusquest never really ended it just resolved a big arc

All the boychildren gathered at the Ampora household to say goodbye to Eridan; not because they particularly liked him, but because his family was pretty bougie despite the demise of their vile patriarch only two weeks before and the fact that Cronus was a member of it. All of them but Tavros stood outside, Tavros of course sat comfy and secure in his wheely device clutching his pillow excitedly. Now that the potential to eat human meat was all gone, he'd be receiving rich immigrant snacks guilt-free from the two women who had fattened Eridan's plump ass all the way up- at least before he did his keto bullshit. Beside him stood Gamzee, chilling In a semilucid state in his new bejeweled yeezys and gucci attire, a custom made backpack w a brand new sleeping bag and fluffy pillow in his arms, his hair in microbraids. He took the Tech N9ne money, but he felt like he was missing something important- truly the only reason he had packed up his new Nintendo switch and gone to Eridan's for this stupid goodbye party. Rapidly approaching came John, Karkat, Dave, and Sollux. 

"YOU LOSERS READY TO BE ON THE INTERNET?!" Sollux lisped excitedly. 

"Sollux, they're already on the internet. Everyone's on the internet. Tavros is updating his Facebook right now." Karkat said with irritation. Sollux made an indignant noise at Karkat's ruining of his fun.

"Uh... Yeah... My Tia doesn't want me here because of the uh... Murders? Even though it was just their dad, and she's talking crazy to my mom now." Tavros replied as he thumbed his screen. "I'm convincing her not to come pick me up just to make her stop yelling. I wanna see what their house is like when the property value's not ruined." 

"We could have rung the doorbell like... Fifteen minutes ago. Tell her it's safe because I'm here, bro." Gamzee said, his eyes shaded by trendy tiny sunglasses. 

"Why would you being here make my Tia think we're safe?" Tavros asked. 

"If you tell her I'm here she's going to assume two things, the first of which is that my momma decided it was safe and let me come here, which is false. A-a-ron let me come here and is helping me lie to momma about me going to someone else's competing sleepover meant to take all Eridan's friends away from his by offering access to a pool." 

"You probably shouldn't call your dad A-a-ron if he's gonna be that cool." Tavros interrupted. 

"He's not my real dad no matter how cool he is and no one can tell me otherwise. Anyway, the second thing she's gonna think is that Kurloz came here, which is also wrong. So tell her I'm here." He said cooly. "Someone ring the doorbell." He added. 

"Did your fingers get too rich to touch dirty peasant doorbells?" John asked.

"Naw I'm just not feeling it right now. I'm having me a wonderin' sesh." He said detachedly. 

Before anyone could ring the doorbell, Eridan opened it from the other side. "Why are you dimwitted assholes pooling on my lawn? Come inside." He ordered. The boys entered, leaving the door hanging on it's hinge as if they'd entered a barn. Yaya rushed over to shut it without scolding them. They all walked into the dining room to lay their unworthy eyes upon a frankenfeast of shit from all the different fast food places, hot dogs, burgers, pizzas, french fries with different toppings, tacos, nacos and burritos, fried chicken and the fixings. Randomly interspersed were two litres of aggressively American sodas, like mountain dew and cherry vanilla Pepsi. "Join me in my last aggressively American feast." He solemly invited. "Mom's not gonna put it away for a while so if you get hungry again just come back and microwave some alrighty? I specifically pleaded and begged with my own personal tears to be allowed to overeat today like a six hundred pound man with three teeth and one and a half feet, was just absolutely unconsolable until she let me buy all this garbage. There is ice cream in the fridge." 

Tavros beheld the feast with tears in the corners of his eyes, excited though it was absolutely the opposite of the food he had expected. "It's beautiful." He wept as he wheeled towards the disgusting fast food mountain. Eridan sat at the head of the table and began placing dollar menu food onto the nice quest china with silver tongs and spoons. All of the boys filled their stomachs with garbage like pigeons having a dinner party, until they were too stuffed to move and decided to slither onto the floor to start Facebooking under the table as they all fell into a deep food coma, except for Sollux, who was still full of energy to do Kyle shit with, immune to the itis because of his generally unhealthy white trash lifestyle. 

"We should play Apex upstairs, away from the adults." He lisped. His friends moaned from their food comas. "No, really, come on guys let's go." He insisted to another round of moans. He lowered his voice. "I want to say bad words like ass and shit. I'll tell the rest of you what pussy is like if you come upstairs so I can say naughty words to strangers on Xbox live." The children began to shuffle upstairs in unison at Sollux's words, Gamzee and Karkat grabbing Tavros to drag him on up there while Eridan carried his chair so he could resume having freedom of motion when they reached their destination. 

"Y'all are carrying me back down these stairs." Tavros said. "I can get down them myself if I have to but I don't want to so y'all are carrying me and my chair regardless." 

"We aren't going back downstairs tonight, its cool motherfucker." Gamzee said casually. 

"No it's not cool; I'm making this clear, these stairs have skinny treads and tall risers and I'm not cool to drive because I'm full of chicken and mountain dew so if we change levels for any reason y'alls carrying me every time."

"It's a Victorian house." Eridan groaned. "Tavros is right, the staircases are abnormally deadly and I have this weird, deep almost instinctual feeling that Tavros needs to avoid stairs just as a general rule, to such an extent as we should all be warned about them. Let's stay upstairs because wheelchairs are heavy and this sucks tremendously." 

"Why didn't you boys stay on the ground floor?" Eridan's mother asked from the bottom of the staircase. "It'd be easier for poor Tavros, he wouldn't have to worry about a fire."

"We want to be rude naughty boys and fart extra loud on purpose." Sollux said. "Nothing you or Yaya need concern yourselves with. If we catch something on fire we'll all weewee on it until it goes out." Irene raised her eyebrow, but was too bereaved to follow them. They set Tavros back into his mobility aid and went to Eridan's room to be horrible naughty children. All eyes were on Sollux. 

"What does pussy feel like?" Karkat asked. 

Like pussy." Sollux replied. 

"That doesn't actually help us." Eridan said angrily. 

"I didn't say I'd compare it to something, I said I'd tell you what it felt like, and I'm tautologically correct. Pussy is what pussy feels like." 

"Guys, it's not a big deal, let it go." John said, uncomfortable about all this pussy talk even though he was the only boy in the room who had actually felt a pussy before.

"Sollux, and I do mean this personally, you are such a tool." Eridan said as Sollux grabbed his Nazi helmet and put it on his head. "Don't mess with the straps. They took forever to adjust to fit my head." 

"Eridan? You wear that?" Tavros asked uncomfortably.

"Only when I'm makin' movies." He said. 

"You make private Nazi movies?" Gamzee asked disgustedly. 

"Yeah, they're really good bad guys for war movies. You ain't gotta explain shit, everyone knows Nazis are bad." Eridan said defensively.

"Can we see one of your weird Nazi movies?" Tavros asked incredulously. 

"I guess. Tell me what you think." Eridan pulled up one of his Nazi movies on his desktop and played it for his friends, then sat on his bed and diddled with his phone anxiously. The boys were treated to about 15 minutes of Eridan in a Nazi uniform pretending to parachute in and shoot at himself in historical looking clothes from across his backyard-- his Yaya's vegetables, garden fence, and house in several of the shots even though he tried to be careful with his angles. He yelled in poorly pronounced Google translated German and regular functional Greek at himself from across the yard, interspersed with scenes of English language narration In a crummy fake English accent while he wore a sweater vest and big round glasses while pacing around his dad's office looking visibily nervous. 

"Eridan, What the fuck is this?" Tavros asked. 

"It's the battle of Crete, except it's not finished because Yaya won't let me use my great grandpa's uniform. She says I'll ruin it playing in the backyard, but that's ok because the civilians of Crete were a major force during the battle. Weren't you paying attention?"

"No." Gamzee said bluntly. 

"Eridan I'm sorry but did you use makeup to make the Nazi character look sexier than the Greek peasant?" Sollux asked. 

"No? I was trying to look German, Sollux. German people don't look like me." He snapped. 

"So you did makeup to look like another ethnicity that is not your own?" Gamzee asked. 

"Well when you say it like that it sounds terrible. Yes, I did whiteface to look german." 

"And you did no makeup for the Greek guy?" John asked, before anyone could ask what he did when he covered battles from the north African campaign.

"I smeared some dirt on my face to look like a disheveled and frightened civilian suddenly fighting a Nazi paratrooper. I didn't need greek guy makeup, I'm already Greek." He said, shrugging as if this logic were obvious to everyone." 

"If we keep watching the video do you fuck the hot Nazi?" Sollux asked with a giggle.

"No. I mean strictly speaking no, the Nazis fucked us. We lost the battle of Crete." Eridan said, oblivious and preoccupied with the historical facts, "but we made them regret it, the luftwaffe took heavy casualties and didn't try any more airborne assaults like that."

"So you fantasize about getting fucked by Nazis." Sollux giggled. The other boys laughed, but Eridan went scarlet. Sollux stood up and performed repeated pelvic thrusts while making a duck face, the helmet rattling as it wasn't fitted for his head.

"Dude stop, you'll turn him on." Gamzee squealed. The boys collapsed into puddles of mirth, except for Eridan, who was a puddle of shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱


	2. Eridan Doesn't Move Back to Greece

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't make it 🤷

The boychildren dug through Eridan's room at the epiphany that it definitely had tons of costumes in it, tossing aside all the airsoft milsim replicas that had formerly made them profoundly uncomfortable about his potential to become a school shooter as they sought ammunition to make Eridan miserable at his own going away party in his own home. They found a theater troupe's worth of historical attire and military costumes sorted into bags to keep them together, many of which had clearly been purchased at a military surplus store. Gamzee lifted a toga and golden laurel set, laughing hysterically. "Show us the video where your fat ass squeezed into this, my dude." 

"I haven't actually used that one yet, though. I wanted to wait." he said shyly. 

"What? You have an unused Roman Emporer costume?" Sollux lisped incredulously. "You have to wear it now, for yourself and everyone. Or just show us the video where you squeezed your fat ass into this toga and stop trying to be embarrassed about it because I already found your youtube channel and if I find it while you're sleeping I'm going to rig it to play on the big TV and we're all gonna see your fat ass dressed up as Nero for breakfast."

"He was shy about his titties. I am too, I totally get it." Karkat said encouragingly, trying to be nice. "Let the boy conceal his man breasts. He doesn't have to show us anything, it's his body and his choice."

"He doesn't have titties anymore." John said. "He did keto. Eridan, wear the costume or I'm gonna help Sollux find it on youtube. It's the least I can do as penance for fucking his girlfriend."

"Wait, you fucked my girlfriend?" Sollux asked in a flat voice. "She told me she's ace."

"Yeah, I banged Terezi that one time, then she came downstairs and told everyone she was a slut. Am I the only one who remembers?" John replied.

"Oh, no. Terezi's not my girlfriend, you can fuck her as much as you want. Feferi's my girlfriend, you really don't pay attention to our goingson, do you?"

"No. I'm really concerned with my studies, I want to go to Harvard so I need a perfect GPA. I get most of my information about what's happening with you guys from Roxy. He makes a weekly document and sends it to me on Sundays, unless there's an especially urgent development, because he wants me to have a childhood." John said.

"Oh, that makes sense. Carry on with your activities, then, and honestly you can date Terezi, I don't think anyone else has their eye on her. Does anyone else in here wanna bang Terezi?" Sollux asked, raising his hand as if to indicate how to announce one's intentions. John raised his hand high, and Eridan half-raised his and gave it a 'maybe' wobble to communicate that he was only kindof interested. 

"He doesn't count, he's moving to Greece. Terezi's all yours, John." Sollux said. 

"Nah, I'm not gonna date Terezi, just booty call her. That's too much time I could spend studying." John said.

"You don't have to spend a lot of time with her to date her, it's super easy. Hang on, I'll show you." Eridan said. He picked up his phone and called Vriska, requesting that she sneak through the window. He nodded and gave a thumbs up to the group before wrapping it up. "See? She's gonna come over right now, and then usually we'd make out. So easy."

"That's a booty call, Eridan." Tavros said.

"Yeah that's booty callin'", Gamzee reaffirmed. 

"Well, either way, I just demonstrated that it works. I'd like if all of you dragged all my costumes into the closet and then also hid in there for uh... ... ... maybe forty five minutes." Eridan said, gesturing a bit because he never learned to talk without using hand gestures. 

"D-did you just temporarily sexile all of us from your going away party?" Karkat stammered from sheer confusion.

Eridan looked pensive for a moment before answering. "Yes."

"For all of us to cooperate with this you're going to have to wear the Nero costume." Tavros said.

"It's not even a Nero costume, but no I'm not doing it." Eridan said with sweeping side to side gesture indicating he was not down with the idea.

"If you don't put it on we won't go in the closet." Dave finally said, his first words all night. Everyone looked on in wonder, having forgotten he was there. Gamzee became visibily prone to violence, immediately, and Dave raised his sleeping bag to conceal himself again, backing against the wall to conceal himself like a discount Ninja. As he left, he dropped his phone on the ground, but did not dare turn around to retrieve it. Gamzee immediately calmed back down with a contented honk and immediately picked up Dave's phone and started trying to unlock it. Dave snuck back out to the hall and crept downstairs to the fast food feast to wait for everyone to forget he was there again so he could sneak back in, retrieve his phone, and quietly exit before Gamzee got another chance to beat his face in. The boys argued, until finally Eridan put on the Nero costume and waited for Vriska. The boys giggled as he posed in the outfit to appease their shitheaded desires, and they took pictures, including some on Eridan's own phone so he could remember the moment.

As Vriska entered the room and began to address Eridan's unusual attire, Sollux snuck out of the closet and took Eridan's phone, which was still unlocked from the photoshoot, and began to record the two of them making out through the gap in the door.

"Sollux, dude." Karkat whispered. Tavros nudged him and mouthed the words "shut up". Sollux winked and continued to record them through the door gap while Tavros and John restrained Karkat, who really didn't need to be restrained but also showed definite indications he wanted to take the phone away and end the recording. Fortunately, Vriska could not hear the antiscuffle over Eridan's moaning, which while not very loud, began the second she started to make crotch contact. Sollux had to restrain laughter, his shoulders rolling a bit and making the recording shaky. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Gamzee got Dave's phone unlocked, and began to record as well. To everyone's alarm and disgust, Eridan and Vriska totally porked. Eridan threw what he intended to be a covert thumbs up to the dudes in the closet, and then Vriska also threw a thumbs up even though she had no idea why Eridan had done it. 

When they had finished, Gamzee immediately started to upload the video to PornDig. His eyes rolled back in his head as he summoned the strength and necessary muse to post a sufficiently Dave-like title and caption, settling for "Nerd bangs the fattest girl at school" and "I learned it from you, Dirk. I learned to film porn from smuppets." He smiled coldly, but didn't laugh so nobody would be able to figure out what he did.

Sollux also nearly uploaded his video, choosing to go straight to PornHub, and performed a similar ritual facial expression as he decided to actually not do this horrible thing to Eridan afterall, realizing that if Eridan got arrested for distribution of child pornography he'd stay in the United States to serve time in juvenile prison and have ample chances to locate poor innocent future Sollux's places of school or work and shoot them up when he finally got out. By then, Future Sollux could co-own a skatepark with Mituna, have married a fine bitch who wasn't asexual, and watched her birth beautiful special needs children of his own. He couldn't live with the knowlege that current Sollux could be responsible for future Eridan shooting his wonderful future family and skatepark patrons to get back at current Sollux. 'Future Sollux deserves better.' He thought to himself, electing to just leave the amateur porn on Eridan's phone as a present for him so he could watch it if he failed to get booty in Greece. After Vriska left and the boys came out of the closet, Sollux quietly returned Eridan's phone to his bedside table.

Karkat clapped a hand onto his shoulder and whispered "I'm proud of you, Sollux", but because he is Karkat, his whisper was still loud.

"Why are you proud of him, exactly?" Eridan asked. 

"He didn't post his recording of you fucking Vriska to PornHub, he decided that he's a good person." John said before anyone could do damage control.

"UH... Sollux? You recorded me and Vriska?" Eridan asked, puffing his meager teen chest and preparing for battle. 

"Yeah, on your phone, so you can watch it when you get to Greece, like, in case Greek bitches don't like you." He said defensively. 

"Why wouldn't Greek girls like me?" Eridan shouted. 

"Uh, because you're a giant nerd, no girls like you." Tavros said in Sollux's defense.

"He literally just fucked Vriska." John said. "Vriska's a girl."

"She doesn't matter! She's not a real girl!" Tavros yelled.

"How isn't Vriska a real girl?" literally everyone asked with differing levels of anger and intrigue.

"She has pushed me down the stairs on NUMEROUS OCCASIONS! Vriska's not a girl because Vriska is a MONSTER. You better log on to Deviantart for your porn Eridan, because you're a MONSTERFUCKER."

John's eye got to twitchin' and his eyebrow began to vibrate in confusion at Tavros's logic. Gamzee knelt down beside him and tried to explain to Tavros in a soothing and educational tone of voice that no matter how mean a girl is, she's still a girl and her attitude can never change that. Eridan clasped his hands together and began to explain that actually he is a monsterfucker, but Vriska isn't a real monster, just a young woman who has horrible, evil feelings in her very human heart. Karkat, being a good friend, immdiately stopped Eridan from doing that before he made it really socially awkward. Sollux took out his phone and started hacking all the neighbor's routers and changing the names to swearwords and the passwords to random strings of letters and numbers so that the neighbors couldn't change them back. Dave re-entered the room to see this confusion, quickly grabbed his sleeping bag and went back downstairs to sleep off his food coma.

The cops kicked in the door two hours later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk 😱😱😱😱😱😱😱😱


	3. Kurloz's business proposition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kurloz convinces a-a-ron to invest in his business
> 
> TW ICE

Kurloz waddled out from his room to the living room with a large piece of trifold posterboard and a dream. His mother and A-a-ron looked to him with suspicion, as all of the three of them knew he was still grounded.

"Alright, guys. I have learned my lesson, and I'm going to show you my new plan to keep collecting money of my own how I'm used to", he said, then set the posterboard on the coffee table, unfolding it to reveal a large, printed out tuxedo pooh meme, to which he gestured with a children's magic wand from a magician's kit he'd received as a child. Beside the upper, less classy standard winnie the pooh, he had spelled out 'selling drugs' in comic sans. The lower, much more educated and snappily dressed william the feces' window bore the text 'Selling things that people use with drugs' in baroque font.

A-a-ron raised his hand and asked, "So you're going to sell them like, them little cheapass silk flowers in glass vials sealed with foil you see at truck stops that only have flowers in them so everyone can pretend it's not literally a crack pipe?"

"No", Kurloz said immediately. "I don't have pretensions about myself, i'm a gentle boy and crackheads frighten me. I want to open a concessions stand near the high school, but like that's open all the time instead of just when there's football. We're gonna sell jolly ranchers, skittles, gummi bears, doritos, hot dogs on a roller next to a nacho cheese dispenser, them french toast and sausage tornado things, cough syrup, Visene eye drops, and the crispy sprite they serve at McDonald's."

As he finished his sentence, his parents began to laugh at him. "The Crispy sprite?" his momma asked.

"Good luck kid, that clown Ronald doesn't give the crispy sprite recipe to anyone." Tech n9ne laughed. 

"Ok, so regular sprite, then", Kurloz said. "Anyway, can I do it? Can I be ungrounded to open my shop?"

"No, kid", Tech n9ne said, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm not stupid. That's a lean stand with food. You're not opening a lean stand outside the highschool." Kurloz gasped and put his hands to his cheeks in shock on the realization that adults knew about lean. 

"Lean stand?" Mrs. Makara asked. 

"I just mean kids are gonna lean on the walls of the place, don't worry about it. I'm gonna go talk to Kurloz in his room." A-a-ron responded, grabbing Kurloz by the ear to do just that. Once safely away from Mrs. Makara, A-a-ron spoke. "Listen kid, I'll let go that your plan to stop selling drugs was to open a do it yourself drug kit emporium if you get me that crispy sprite recipe. Hell, you get me that, I won't even care you just tried to get me to invest in a lean stand at a highschool, I appreciate your entrepreneurial spirit and I'll fund the bitch as long as you don't sell cough syrup, but you gotta get me the secrets of Crispy Sprite. Ronald will never see it coming from a kid, so if you infiltrate his base of operations and get in close you might be able to sneak on out of there with it."

Kurloz nodded. "So I gotta work at McDonald's." 

A-a-ron nodded. "You gotta work at McDonald's and climb the corporate ladder high enough to get us the crispy sprite."

"I'm not uh... ... like really professional, though", Kurloz said, scratching his ear.

"It'll help if you don't show up wearing a children's halloween skeleton bodysuit under purposely ripped clothes. Looking professional is half the challenge of being professional", A-a-ron suggested helpfully.

"But dad, my skelton suit is awesome and I look great. What do you know about professional attire? You're an artist, you dance around onstage dressed up like a scary clown."

"Yeah, I dance around on a stage dressed like a scary clown, I don't go to home depot and shop for refrigerators dressed as a scary clown", Tech N9ne corrected. "My scary clown clothes are situationally appropriate, just like your skeleton man gig is appropriate for a weedman but it's not appropriate for a motherfucker with a job."

Kurloz nodded at the validity of this information, but didn't like that it currently applied to him. "So I need clothes I ain't gone and tore up."

"Yes. I will take you to walmart and buy you some appropriate clothes for mcdonalds", Tech N9ne said. Kurloz wrinkled his nose at the fact he would not be getting gucci gear, but also recognized that wearing gucci gear to McDonalds would make it smell like pickles and fry oil for eternity. Before he could speak, A-a-ron held up his hand and brought his phone to his ear. 

Twelve minutes later, Gamzee, Kurloz, and Tech N9ne rode home from the police station. "Alright, so, just so we have a unified understanding of what happened-" Gamzee began, but was cut off.

"I understand what happened, that wild ass Ampora kid wanted to have a wild sex party and now all ya'lls in trouble. I shouldn't have let you go to his party", A-a-ron nearly yelled with anger.

"No, no, you don't. I recorded what Eridan did on Dave's phone to get Dave in trouble because I hate him. I want to tell you now so that we don't all get confused tripping over our own feet when Dave tries to say he didn't do it and gets a lawyer on this." Gamzee explained. "I didn't tell anyone else at the party, not even Tavros, and nobody saw me do it."

"Well, I mean, that makes sense." Kurloz said. "Fuck Dave."

"I got some terrible children." Tech N9ne lamented.

"Wait, it's worse than that. John and Tavros pretended that they only spoke Spanish so they wouldn't have to answer questions about how Eridan and Vriska got on PornDig and they got picked up by ICE." Gamzee said with a slight panic. "We're gonna have to rescue them from ICE."

Tech N9ne winced, stopped the car, placed it in park, and lowered his head onto the steering wheel. "I should have listened to your mother. I should not have let you go to that party." 

"More like Dave should have known better than to stay at that party", Kurloz said.

"We can't worry about that now, A-a-ron. We gotta put this vehicle in reverse and go kidnap Tavros out the ICE van, like, before it gets to wherever those bitches go." Gamzee said.

"And John." Kurloz added.

"Naw, fuck John, I don't care if he gets picked up by ICE. We gotta save Tavros."

"I mean, John's in the same van, it literally costs us zero effort to also save John." Tech N9ne said. 

"Naw, fuck John, only Tavros", Gamzee asserted.

"We are also saving John." Kurloz said.

"And the rest of the motherfuckers in the van. We're gonna open the doors up, and then just let them all do whatever it is they're gonna do", Tech N9ne said, throwing the car into reverse and slamming the pedal to the floor. The engine revved dramatically as the car sped backwards, and A-a-ron handed out clown masks to the boys. "Put them shits on, someone's definitely going to bust out their cell phone", he said. The boys solemnly pulled on their masks, realizing they were about to commit crimes against the US government. "Why not John, Gamzee? What did he ever do to you?" 

Gamzee clasped his hands together and looked to the floorboards sheepishly. "John never lets me copy his homework. I don't want to be a bad kid, It's just there's so much homework and sometimes I forget, and I only ask the man because he's bomb at math so his answers are right. He tells me it's not his problem."

"Well, I mean, it's not." A-a-ron said. 

"Wow, Fuck John." Kurloz said.

"Alright, well I'm still saving John. He's right, it's really not his problem. We're gonna get you a planner and a chore board and help you get organized so you don't keep asking John for help", Tech N9ne said. "Everyone here understands we're not telling Tavros's parents he got picked up by ICE, right?" 

"Wait, how do you know we're even going toward the ICE van?" Kurloz asked. Before anyone could answer, the rear of the car slammed into the side of the exact ICE van they were talking about. 

"Alright motherfuckers, everybody out!" A-a-ron yelled, his clown mask on, a shotgun in his hands. ICE agents jumped out of the cab, but immediately saw a clown with a shotgun and peed their pants. "That's right! Clowns are scary", Tech N9ne yelled, cocking the shotgun. Gamzee and Kurloz hopped out of their car, posturing menacingly at the ICE agents, who ran away because clowns are scary. Kurloz grabbed bolt cutters from the ruined trunk and cut open the back of the van. Just as expected, everyone but Tavros flooded out. 

"I'M NEVER SPEAKING SPANISH IN PUBLIC AGAIN!" John screamed, fleeing into an alley and disappearing into the city.

"SAME!" another former van occupant screamed, running down a different alley. 

Kurloz tossed Tavros over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and got clear of the cars. "What do we do now? We're totally gonna get caught!" he yelled to his clown father. 

"Naw." Tech N9ne said, whipping out his keyfob and hitting the "ignite" button. His car and the ICE van both exploded, and the uber he'd summoned on the way to the scene of the crime rolled up to the corner and honked. "GET IN THE UBER." he commanded. The boys climbed in, buckling Tavros into the middle seat. "Go get that kid in the blue hoodie. We have to talk to him." he told the driver, pointing down the alley John had run into.

"I uh... we don't..." the driver began.

"I wasn't asking." Tech N9ne said, brandishing his shotgun. The uber driver proceeded to do as she was instructed and chased John down the alley, beeping at him to stop. John, winded and jogging slowly in a struggle to avoid the car, finally doubled over and puked. 

Gamzee rolled down the window. "John! Get in the Uber!" he called to him. Tears in his eyes, John looked at the car full of scary clowns and Tavros, and considered the exhausted state of his unathletic body, still stuffed with an abundance of greasy junk food from Eridan's shitty party despite having just puked some of it up. Bitterness clawed at the back of his throat. He climbed into the car. "Aight, we're gonna take you home", Gamzee said, "but only if you explain to us that you understand no matter what happens, you can't tell Tavros's mom you guys got picked up by ICE."

"I kinda wanna tell my mom I got picked up by ICE", Tavros whimpered. 

"No. She will never let you hang out with us again", Gamzee said.

"Yeah, your Tia was already going nuts and your mom only just barely asserted her independence enough to make decisions about where her own kids get to go. We can't tell your mom", Kurloz insisted.

"I kinda want some therapy", Tavros cried, tears rolling down his face. 

"Tavros, no", John wheezed. "You can't tell your mom, or these guys are gonna kick me out of the car, and I'll have to walk home."

"That's right." Tech N9ne said. "You can't tell your mom." 

"O... ok", Tavros sobbed. "I won't tell my mom." 

As the uber driver ferried the crowd to their selected location, the local Denny's, everyone got a notification on their news app about an ICE van intercepted by the insane clown posse. The clowns laughed all the way to Denny's, and all the way inside.


	4. Karkat walks himself home

Around noon, Karkat kicked open his front door. "Hello family, I had a normal stay at the Ampora's and was not interrogated by the police at all." He announced, eyes closed and belly full of fast food and anxiety. When he opened his eyes, he realized that he was standing in the open air, his parents had burned down the house in another knock-down, drag-out divorce proceedings fight and nobody had thought to tell him yet. "Fuck me on roller skates." He mumbled, peering down the ruined hall to see if there was any chance his personal bedroom was still intact when the fire department put the house out. He picked his way down the hallway and was surprised to find Cronus fucking around in Kankri's ruined room. 

"Oh hey Karkat. How was my brother? Is he fat again yet?" He asked, flipping through charred, partially burned rubble. 

"No, he's not fat again yet. Don't let Kankri hear you say shit like that, he's gonna cave in your face. Are you the only one here?" Karkat asked. 

"Naw Kankri's out in the backyard with his computer in a bag of rice trying to figure out which apartments we can afford so we don't have to deal with our house burning down twice a week. He won't come inside, something about structural instability and collapsing floors. I'm not concerned." He waved his hand dismissively and carried on.

"So we're the only ones in the house." Karkat confirmed.

"Not much of a house, but yeah. Just us." 

"Bro listen, don't tell my parents but your dumb brother fucked Vriska and Dave recorded him and now they're all in trouble for child porn." Karkat whispered frantically. 

"I'm sorry, what? You said when you came into the house that you had a normal time with my brother and didn't get interrogated by the police. This is the opposite of that. And how are kids in trouble for child porn? That doesn't make sense." In his confusion, Cronus stopped sifting through the rubble, his sooty hands in front of him as if he was literally attempting to grasp reality.

"It's porn and they're children, its pretty self explanatory", Karkat said. 

"I don't think that happened." Cronus said. "Here, help me find Kankri's wallet. Apparently he can't die from being on fire but he runs out of the goddamn house in a panic without his shit like it's a dire situation anyway." 

Karkat stood in disbelief for numerous reasons as Cronus resumed his search, least of all the nonsense he'd spewed about Kankri being fireproof, as if he'd witnessed something to give reason for him to believe kankri possessed this superpower, for which there was literally no evidence. "Dude your brother needs you, you should like, probably go help your family." 

"My fiancee needs me to find his wallet." Cronus stated. His face lit up with excitement as he flipped some rubble. "Uwu, what's this?" He asked, pulling the wallet from under a bit of ceiling. He began to stand, his arm partially thrust over his head, legend of Zelda chest opening song halfway sung, when the floor collapsed, dumping him into the basement. 

Karkat stared down at him through the hole. Kankri had been right, being inside a partially burnt down house was stupid. Once the shock wore off, he called out softly. "Did you die?" 

"No". Cronus moaned. 

"Are your insides on your outsides?" 

After a tense ten second check over, Cronus moaned again. "No." 

"How's your spine?" Karkat asked 

"Intact, probably." Cronus whined. 

"And the rest of your skeleton?" 

"Why don't you come down here and check? I'm not feeling it right now." Cronus choked, tears stinging the corners of his eyes. 

"Alright buddy. I'm gonna call the ambulance." Karkat said, reaching for his phone. 

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea." He sobbed. 

The next morning, Cronus waddled out of the ER back into the waiting room to meet Kankri and Karkat. They sat sprawled across four chairs with Kankri's huge bag of rice between them, empty cans of monster energy drink and empty fast food bags gathered on the floor around them. "Guys I have a concussion", Cronus moaned. "Have we got a hotel? I need rest."

"I'm going to Jade's house." Karkat insisted.

"Did you ask the Harley's if you could go to Jade's house?" Kankri asked. 

"No, I always just show up and it's fine." He replied. 

"How about you try asking if we can all go to Jade's house so I don't have to spend all my college money on hotels and apartments? I'm slowly realizing how expensive they are." Kankri moaned. 

"Let's all be very still and quiet and put me in Jade's guest bed." Cronus wept. "We can't be spending the college money Gamzee didn't force you to donate to charity on rooms." 

Kankri and Karkat both looked to Cronus in confusion. "Did you get the concussion before or after the floor collapsed?" Karkat asked. "Because that's the second weird thing you've said about Kankri." 

Cronus put one hand over his eyes and waved the other dismissively. "Oh, fuck. Don't worry about it, you guys weren't there. I forgot." 

"Kankri wasn't there for Kankri catching on fire or Kankri being forced by Gamzee to donate his money to charity?" Karkat asked. 

"Yeah, just me. It's alright don't worry about it." He said, waving his hand while keeping most of his body extremely static to avoid igniting pain in his noggin once more. 

"Is this going to end in another weird dissociative capgras syndrome looking thing like you had sophomore year where you insisted your dad killed you and kept citing details about the fictional murder for like two months and insisting the us that were there aren't the same us and that's why you're alive? Or, now that I think of it, the time you did that in both seventh and eigth grade, and also for like two weeks toward the end of junior year?" Kankri asked 

"What? That never happened, and besides, this is completely different. I mean, these all share the detail that my dad totally did murder me, but it's nothing to worry about, y'all weren't there it's cool." 

Kankri pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned. "Ok, since I'm not your parents I'm actually going to take care of you, let's go to the psych ward and figure out if this is dangerous." Kankri said, standing up.

"No need, I can fail to pose a threat to myself and others in the Harley's guest bed just as well as I can in the psych ward. Its gonna be ok guys. 

"I mean, it's not." Karkat said, "but he's got a point. Let him go to bed, Kankri." 

Kankri sighed with frustration. "I mean, sure, maybe he won't do anything, but is it optimal for him to think he's dead and we're all like, from the evil twin universe or whatever?" 

"There's no evil twin universe, I'm sure you're all exactly as nice as before, you just weren't there for all that. That's all."

"I wasn't there for me being on fire or donating my college money to charity?" Kankri asked, just to make sure.

"Right. See? You totally get it. Please put me somewhere dark and quiet now." Cronus whined. 

As they headed for the door, it opened, and Eridan came in in handcuffs escorted by the police. "Hi guys." He sobbed. "What brings you all to the hospital?" 

"Your dickweed brother got a concussion." Karkat said. "What happened to you? Jail fight?" 

Eridan began to cry louder. "He tried to hide his cell phone in his asshole so we wouldn't confiscate it and it's stuck." An officer said helpfully. 

"God damn it Eridan, your ass is not a pocket." Cronus wailed. "Why is that always the first hiding place you think of?" 

"It usually works", Eridan cried, tears streaming down his face. "Nobody wants to look in a guy's a-hole, Cronus. Absolutely nobody, not even you."

The Vantas boys could not comment, because they were both laughing too hard. Karkat got out his phone and called Eridan, and muffled ringtone could be heard from Eridan's belly. "Yes." He said. "now you have witnessed for yourself, truly my phone is inside my body. Please hang up." 

The police shook their heads at the situation, especially since they both recognized Cronus from the numerous nights he'd sat in jail before his dad argued him out of trouble, and also recognized that these kids dad was the pervert cannibal who got extradited back to Greece. "Wow, a pervert kid from a pervert family." The cop shook his head. 

"Eridan's not a pervert!" Cronus insisted, "he sticks things up his ass because he thinks that's what POWs do, because he's relentlessly stupid and loves war movies. Please give him the benefit of the doubt." 

"Kid, your brother put cp on porndig." The cop replied. "That's something perverts do. Keistering objects that are known to vibrate is also something perverts do. He's a pervert, you're a pervert, your father was a pervert, your pervert mom married him, at this point I'm sure even your granny is a pervert. Pervert family." 

"Eridan would never make porn. He makes home movies, sure, but they're about him reenacting world war two in our backyard by himself because he doesn't make friends. Please, I promise he did not make cp. My little brother is a lot of terrible things; a stalker, a misogynist, a future mass shooter, but a pervert he is not." Cronus pleaded. "Just take his phone out of his asshole, give him his gross shitty phone back and let him go home." 

"Do I look like a judge? I'm definitely not a judge." The cop said. "try convincing the judge, I'm just here to get a nurse to pull a cellphone out of a kid's ass." 

"Karkat, please. I beg you. Stop calling my phone." Eridan wailed. Karkat only laughed harder, his body limp on the floor and convulsing with guffaws.

"Fuck. I guess I have to get my brother out of jail." Cronus moaned, as the cops escorted Eridan to the exam room.


	5. Cronus shits in a walmart parking lot

Kankri sat in the passenger seat of the shitty wizard van as the two observed the walmart before them. "Cronus, I mean, really, we can go to a better store." the young man insisted, clad in a turtleneck sweater even though it was now late June. Really, he just didn't want to go inside, he had heard the stories, and he knew that fuckery awaited within the ubiquitous department store. His own family did not enter that vile chain for any reason, because they were too rich and snooty to expose themselves to such shenannigans.

"I've been here like a million times, we're just going to go get a cheap suit and get out. I've gotta be able to look like an attorney since my cannibal pa's not gonna be there to save Eridan's soft supple ass from prison rape, I can sneak into my old house and use all the lawyer books and they'll probably let Eridan go. But I can't wear my dad's suit, because that'd be fucking nasty, I'm not gonna recycle cannibal sweat tweeds. I need a brand new one, OK? One that doesn't smell like hochland cheesy toasts and people meat and also my pa's signature vile stank."

Kankri nodded skeptically. "I mean, like, we could still go to JCPenney or... literally... any store that isn't infamous for people doing meth in the bathrooms and shitting in the changing stalls."

"Kankri." Cronus said in a begging tone, "I've been to walmart like, a bazillion times. It's not that bad, we're gonna be OK. I don't wanna deal with those other stores, they randomly mark shit up higher and higher around the year until black friday, alright? It's like, halfway to turkey time right now, so that shit's marked up at least 175% the normal price. Walmart is always cheap because absolutely nobody gives a shit, period, people come to the store in pajamas and the employees don't care, and if you tailor it, nobody knows where the clothes came from. It's the same shit without the prestige label, only snobs can tell, and I don't fucking like snobs, so fuck them right in the mouth. We just have to get one without cumstains on it."

"Wait... this is like, the first evidence in the entire time I've known you that your family might be slightly good with money." Kankri exclaimed. "I literally cannot imagine your mother shopping at Walmart, does your mom shop at walmart?"

"Yeah." Cronus said, spitting out the open window. "She wears a fuckin' scarf over her head and big sunglasses like one of those old timey starlets thinking nobody will recognize her, she'd put little sunglasses on me too and act like people couldn't tell it was still me, idiot. I'm very distinctive, Kankri, I have a distinctive voice. All her gucci purses are cheap ass knockoffs too, it's my idiot pa and my idiot ass brother who spend a lot of money. Eridan has racked up, like, at least ten thousand dollars in shitty costumes for his stupid movies nobody watches, and my dad had 1943 pennies in his fucking shoes. You know, shoes, like for the feet. That's the most expensive fucking penny. Who the fuck cares enough about fucking shoes to spend a fuckload on something you're going to scuff on every inconveniently placed coffee table you have the displeasure of walking past and then stick dumbass scrooge mcduck expensive pennies in them?!" Cronus throttled the air to simulate choking his shitty father. Kankri nodded, knowing not to interrupt father related rage for any reason. "Kankri, the longer we sit outside of the walmart, the longer you have to construct nightmare scenarios about what's going to be happening inside the walmart while we're there, and eventually you're going to get a tummy ache. Then you'll have big bad tummy cramps, while you're already sitting in this hot ass car, in the hot ass sun, in your hot ass sweater, literally sweating, the shit just rolling down your anxious forehead. Let's go. Let's just go right now." he insisted, opening the door and getting out to stand triumphantly beside the vehicle. With much trepidation, Kankri exited the passenger side and assumed the same triumphant pose as Cronus. The two crossed the parking lot.

As they approached the gates to this humble marketplace, they were greeted with the vile stench of babyshit and the bready aroma of the subway located at the front of the store. Cronus grabbed a cart. 

"Wait, weren't we only getting a suit?" Kankri asked. 

"It's walmart. I'm going to see other shit I need, and I'm going to dump it into the cart, and then we're going to go home with the suit, some new version of a thing at the house i broke, and like fifty dollars worth of groceries I forgot to buy last week because I fucking suck and I don't check the refrigerator before I get in the car, and then I'm already in the car, so like, fuck it, man." As cronus rambled, Kankri peered around uncertainly at the flickering fluorescent lights and dude trying to wax the floor in the meat department even though it was two in the afternoon. "Yeah, here, see? Here's tee shirts, we're gonna get your dumb sweater wearing ass a comfortable tee shirt with a bald eagle in sunglasses holding a hamburger in one foot and a beer in the other on the front of it so you'll actually be dressed for the weather." 

Kankri eyed the exact tee, and his eyes shifted to a bunch of other ridiculous forth of july themed garments. "Uh, no thanks." he muttered. 

"Kankri, no. I get what you're doing, but I've watched you get heatstroke enough times, this summer you're not getting any heatstroke, because you're wearing stupid shirts with me instead." he held one of the tees to Kankri's body, shaking it a little, and then threw a bunch of large tees featuring outrageously misinterpreted summer situations into the cart. The second shirt depicted two palm trees, one wearing a bikini and the other swimtrunks, next to a surfboard at the beach. The third depicted a slightly anthropomorphic largemouth bass reclining in a cozy armchair, cleaning its shotgun, with a man's ass mounted to the wall beside it as a trophy of it's victories. It bore the seemingly unrelated text "Fishin' for compliments". 

"Uh... who... designs these shirts?" the snootiboi asked, beholding the nonsensical designs. 

"I dunno, starving kids in vietnam or something I guess. I try not to worry about it." he waved his hand rapidly in a dismissive gesture as his face pinched up. As predicted, the young men accumulated some forgotten ingredients from the grocery section, a new lawn chair to replace the one Cronus had absentmindedly hit with the lawnmower the previous week, and treated themselves to some sub sandwiches before leaving the mart. As Kankri loaded their haul into the van, Cronus inexplicably undid his belt, dropped trou, and squatted next to the vehicle.

"CRONUS? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" spicy sweater boi asked in bewilderment.

Cronus waved his hand again. "Don't worry, this is normal, people do this here, it's OK. I've gotta take a shit."

"YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SHIT IN THE PARKING LOT!" Kankri screamed. "ANYWHERE!" He added for emphasis. 

"It's cleaner than their bathrooms!" Cronus shouted in response.

"YES, BECAUSE NOBODY SHITS HERE!" Kankri hollered in disgust. 

As the boys went back and forth, the light of the midday sun dimmed, a thin fog rolled over the parking lot, and with a fanfare of the screams of the damned, the lord of the underworld rose up from the asphalt. He announced himself with a furious roar. "DAD, EXCUSE ME, WHAT THE FUCK?" Hades asked. 

"Young man, I am much too young to be your father." Cronus assured, actively pooping as everyone around him could do nothing to stop him. No one would be bold enough to pinch off the loaf with their own hands.

"BRUH." Hades hollered.

"YEAH, SAME, WHAT THE FUCK?" Kankri bruh'd. 

Hades turned to the young man. "I apologize for my father, he has dementia. Or brain damage, or something. One of those things. Something is clearly wrong." he said with a gesture. 

"I am still totally not your dad, I am an ordinary boy with ordinary concerns and no fashionable adult sons that can teleport." Cronus responded. Kankri beheld the man, and noted that he was indeed quite handsome and fashionable, rather unlike the depiction in Disney's Hercules. He and Cronus shared the same cleft chin, which unlike Eridan's, did not look like anything like a little chin butt. 

"You're not really a boy anymore", Kankri interrupted. "You've reached the age of majority, you can actually get charged as an adult for whatever this is." He said with a gesture.

"Public indecency, probably." he said, pulling hand sanitizer a pack of tissues from his pocket as if this outdoor birthing of a monster turd was planned in advanced.

"I'm sorry, do you just carry shitting supplies around in your pocket in case you need to make a turd appear in an inappropriate location?" Kankri asked.

"Uhhh... yeah? Do you not?" Cronus said with a shrug. "let's all get in the car and leave before someone calls uh... I guess the police? Or the manager? Whoever's problem this is going to be." the three of them loaded into the van, Kankri and Hades traumatized. Cronus drove off as if he had done absolutely nothing abnormal, and was completely unbothered by this turn of events. Trying as hard as he could to escape the situation, Kankri finally asked.

"So, Hades, what brings you here?" 

"Wow, how did you know who I was?" Hades asked. "I never told you my name." Cronus stopped the van, so that both of them could look at him incredulously in safety. Once they had given him the facial expression long enough to convey the point, Cronus resumed driving back to the Vantas residence.

"Alright, yes, I'm Hades, god of the underworld, and I'm visiting the mortal plane without getting a rental body, yes, a very rare occasion. I know."

"rental body?" Kankri asked, but nobody answered him. Hades continued to monologue.

"I came here because I knew our family was in trouble, but I didn't realize you had sunk so low as random acts of public defecation."

"Oh, so it wasn't to haul me back to maximum security hell prison or whatever the fuck I'm supposed to totally know about but act as if I don't?" Cronus asked. 

"No, Honestly, as long as you're pretending to be a normal human child with uh... ... ASPD? Probably? Whatever, as long as you're doing whatever it is you do, you're not bothering me, so it's fine. I'm more worried about that whole thing where your brother is about to go to federal pound me in the ass prison. I assume you care about that."

"Why the fuck is this happening? Why is this happening to me?" Kankri muttered, covering his face.

"You're a terrible psychologist, Kankri's mom gave me adderal and when I actually take it I'm doing great and seem like a regular person. Adderal can't fix antisocial personality disorder, so I'm fine."

"No you are not" Kankri moaned, rubbing his face into his hands. 

"Yeah I agree with your boyfriend, no you are not." Hades responded. "Are we going to talk about your brother's future career as a prisoner?"

"I mean, I think I've got it handled. I put on the suit, I read the books, I get really tired and pass out on the books, wake up from my nap, wash the ink transfer off my cheek and then go to court, right? Pa did it like three hundred times or some equally dumb and pointless number, probably, and I was being a cute baby or annoying child in his vicinity most of those times."

"That's... not really how being a lawyer works." Hades interjected.

"I'll be fine." Cronus insisted. "Eridan won't go to prison, he'll be ok." 

"So, alternate plan, we can have Hermes pose as a normal human attorney instead of whatever the fuck you were going to do, and then since he actually knows what he's doing, whatever was going to happen when you did whatever it is you'll do won't, and everyone will be very happy."

"Nah." Cronus insisted. "I got this." He pulled into the Vantas's driveway. Kankri left the car immediately to get out of the street pooper cootie air.


	6. More people show up at the ruined Vantas home

As Hades and Cronus exited the vehicle, Kankri gestured happily to his reconstructed childhood home, the selfsame housing he'd be vacating regardless of the outcome of the divorce this autumn. "Wow, look you guys! My house is back for the one hundred and third time, thank god the carpenters at Italy American decided to keep our blueprints on record after the fifth time this happened. We're literally their best customers, I'm sure they fucking hate us as much as they love our money. Let's all go inside, except for Cronus, who has to use the hose to wash his gross hands first." Hades nodded in agreement and turned on the hose, promptly following Kankri into the house so he could be attractive in private, and reduce his risk of being noticed while taking an unauthorized absence from the underworld. The two of them were aghast at the sight of Karkat, who had apparently made the decision to become a proper demon like his father. He was now taller, handsomer, sporting little candycorn baby horns, and still a little chonky. "Um, Karkat, what the fuck?" Kankri asked immediately. 

"Yeah, wow, I embraced my true nature and fixed the house. I'm tired of mom and dad spending my college money on fixing the fucking house, and I'm a demon, why not just fix my own goddamned house? And everything else. I'm tired of having problems and pretending to be something I'm not." karkat said, rolling his eyes so hard it was physically painful. 

"Karkat, you will still have like, a fuckton of problems." Kankri insisted. "All you did was make god angry with you, you had like seriously better apologize so that you won't have to go back to hell."

"KANKRI, WE LITERALLY BELONG IN HELL. THAT'S WHERE DEMONS LIVE." Karkat hollered. 

"DEMONS ARE FALLEN ANGELS KARKAT! WE ACTUALLY BELONG IN HEAVEN! HELL FUCKING BLOWS!" Kankri screeched in response.

"HOW THE FUCK WOULD YOU EVEN KNOW, KANKRI?! YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO HELL! WE WERE BORN ON EARTH! MAYBE HELL IS NOT THAT BAD!" Karkat yowled.

"Yeah, hell's actually not that fucking bad. Hi, Hades, lord of the underworld at your service. Hell is part of the underworld, which is honestly not that bad." Hades took the opportunity to say.

"FUCKING SEE! THIS GUY'S BEEN TO HELL AND HE SAYS IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING BAD." Karkat screamed, unphased and unable to register this moment as anything other than a chance to win the argument. "IF I CAN'T REBUILD MY HOUSE WITH MY SICK MAGIC AND STILL GO TO HEAVEN, WHY THE FUCK DO I CARE ABOUT HEAVEN?"

"Well, uh, Heaven's awesome." Hades said sheepishly. "It's alright though, hell has a waterpark now. It's pretty dank. It's really shaping up now that we've got a couple engineers."

"SEE!? HELL HAS WATERSLIDES." Karkat insisted. "WATERSLIDES ARE FUCKING DOPE. HELL IS FINE. I DON'T MIND IF I LIVE THERE." 

"Yeah, it's alright." Hades shrugged. 

Kankri sighed deeply, leaning back against the door. Cronus knocked, requesting entry, and Kankri promptly directed him to the bathroom to wash his hands with soap like everyone should every time they use the bathroom, barring dire circumstances like having to use the bathroom in the fucking wilderness with the animals. "I mean, I can't tell you what to do, I guess, but hell is probably not that good if people want to avoid it."

"I mean, It's really not that hell is that bad, they just get terrible PR like the rest of the criminal justice system. You both probably would have ended up somewhere in the underworld anyway, honestly, Heaven's like a popular night club, alright, there's a mean bouncer with a VIP list and if you're not on it it's really about optics. There's a lot of places to go other than hell and heaven."

"What?" Kankri asked. "The things you're saying don't make sense, there's just heaven and hell, that's it that's everything. Anyway, what are you doing in my house?" He said, gesturing sassily to the door.

"You invited me inside." Hades wrung his hands gently in confusion.

"Right, you said a bunch of weird shit about Cronus, too. Weirdest hobo I've ever seen, only goth hobo I've ever seen in person. Anyway, get the fuck back out."

"It's actually in your friend's best interests if you don't kick me out of your house, though. Are you sure?" Hades bit his lip. "It's kindof a big deal for me to show up in person instead of just sending Hermes, actually? So Maybe don't do that yet, maybe let me have a little talk with Cronus, maybe your very smart kid brother as well." 

"Yeah, let him talk to us. You know he's not a hapless vagrant, you know he's a forgotten ancient god." Cronus said, his hands squeaky clean and smelling of lotus flowers if the soap bottle was to be believed.

"I DON'T BELIEVE IN MULTIPLE GODS. IF YOU ARE A GOD OTHER THAN JESUS, PLEASE LEAVE." Kankri asserted. 

Hades began to walk out, grabbing Cronus by the elbow to drag him along. "Hey! Let go asswipe!" Cronus shreiked.

"You heard the man, we have to get out." Hades insisted. "Also, calling me forgotten was very rude, I am very sure people remember me. In fact, I'd wager I'm among the more memorable gods. My existence is well known, there is much awareness of my being."

"Yeah, people know who Hades is." Karkat said.

"He didn't explicitly ask me specifically to leave, man, just you." Cronus whined, yanking his arm away from the actual deity. 

"Actually he did? So you need to get out." Hades yanked at the stubborn boy harder. "Incarnating won't fool anyone, dad, you fucking idiot."

"Um, didn't you say he had dementia or brain damage or something? You're being really shitty and ableist to your dad right now. Maybe he's fooled. Cronus, if you fooled yourself by incarnating you can stay, alright? I can't force you to worship Jesus with me but I can at least provide you with the opportunity, so I'd be a terrible christian to kick you out with this weird goth hobo who thinks he's Hades." 

"Technically, you're a terrible Christian to be kicking him out while you believe he's a goth hobo." Karkat said. "Hades, I invite you to stay and partake of our snacks, since you're a hobo or whatever and there probably isn't a lot to eat out there on the streets."

"There's always the dumpster behind Denny's." Cronus said. 

"I'm older and I said to get out." Kankri insisted. 

"Yes, usually the older sibling is in charge, but seeing as I'm the wiser brother and I asked Hades to eat snacks with me, my authority clearly reigns supreme. Cronus can also stay, I don't know why we're arguing about that, he's clearly a human being." 

"WOW, SHIT YOU GUYS." Another guy announced as he kicked in the half-open front door. He emerged into the house wearing athletic gear, his beefy arms unconstrained, his tee sleeveless, the cloth cut away. The hole-filled sport knit shorts swayed with his rapid movement into the house. "I LOVE TO SEE A GOOD FIGHT. It's me, Ares, God of war. What's up bros, I've got to talk to y'all about this Eridan kid."

"GET OUT!" Kankri screamed. 

"Haha, wow, look at me not doing that." Ares said, kicking the door shut behind himself. 

"JESUS IS THE ONLY GOD ALLOWED INSIDE THIS GOOD CHRISTIAN HOME." Kankri stated, his entire face going red. 

"I MADE THIS HOUSE OUT OF UNHOLY DEMONIC MAGIC, SO IT'S NOT A GOOD CHRISTIAN HOME ANYMORE!" Karkat screamed. Outside, the Construction workers from Italy American pulled up in their fully loaded worktruck, utterly confused to see the home already in a state of repair. The phone rang.

"Well, Come on Cronus, Kankri wants us out." Hades said, pulling his arm again. 

"LET GO OF MY FUCKIN' LIMB OLD MAN!" Cronus screamed, trying to yank away from the god. Ares stood in the corner and licked his lips, watching everyone fight with great interest. Cronus and Hades' altercation became physical, with each of them hollering things that definitely indicated Cronus was pretending not to be a deity so he could live at Kankri's house and not go back to superjail, while Karkat and Kankri screamed at eachother so hard that a blood vessel popped on Kankri's nose. Ares began to wring his hands together excitedly as Karkat smashed a cup on the floor yelling at his brother about Jesus and how he had never come and visited their house. He grinned evilly as Kankri pointed his finger inches away from Karkat's fantastic cat style vertical demon pupil and accused all the gods in his house of being unmedicated homeless people in need of immediate psychological assistance. He began to giggle as Cronus leapt off the kitchen table to execute a shooting star elbow drop on Hades, his eyes glowing with a red tinge. 

"EVERYONE STOP." Ares yelled, stopping no one. "EXCUSE ME PLEASE, EVERYONE STOP." Actually wanting to stop the fighting, he added, "I'll be right back, all this violence is giving me a boner, so I'm going to visit Thanatos." Again, no one stopped, so he increased his volume. "I SAID I'LL BE RIGHT BACK BECAUSE ALL THE VIOLENCE IS GIVING ME A BONER. I'M GOING TO VISIT THANATOS." he asserted. Everyone stopped.

"You mean Aphrodite." Cronus said. 

"Yeah the myths strongly imply you'd go to Aphrodite for boner related inquiries." Kankri said.

"No, I meant Thanatos. I say exactly what I mean, one hundred percent of the time." Ares said, his lips curled in a twisted grin, quite like the grinch's when he'd thought up his plan to steal christmas. 

"Hephaestus must be home." Kankri guessed. "So I guess he has to find someone else to handle his problems."

"Is he going to tell you a sad story about dead puppies so your boner goes away and you can learn how to stop being gross in public?" Cronus asked. 

"Am I the only person here who had the courage to check?" hades asked. "He does not actually have a boner."

"No, I do, I tucked it into my waistband because I'm a strategic genius." Ares insisted. Hades winced in disgust. 

"He's probably going to have him use his spooky deathtouch powers to kill his penis so he can talk to us without getting a boner about all the fighting we do around here." Karkat said. "It probably doesn't matter if your penis dies when you're a god, it probably respawns in your bedroom and you can like, just put it back on."

"No, I'm going to fuck him." Ares said, cackling villanously before disappearing suddenly in a puff of pure war essence. Ethereal weapons, both ancient and modern, clattered to the floor where he had just stood, and the air smelled like grenades. "I'm bringing him back with me, and if you keep arguing I'll fuck him on your beds." his disembodied voice rang out from the other side, a slight echo giving it authority.


	7. Hermes accidentally ruins everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Hermes and he's here to accidentally fuck it up, but you haven't actually found out what he's ruining yet so he'll just seem helpful but he's not

The strilonde family had not noticed anything amiss until Mituna and Aranea ran to the door shreikinf painfully. "Sollux is in jail for child pornography! With Dave! They made child porn of Eridan! Oh my god what do we do?" Mituna shreiked. 

"My sister is also in trouble, mostly for fucking Eridan rather than any other questionable decision she made!" Aranea screamed. "SHE'S BARELY HIT PUBERTY AND SHES ALREADY IN JAIL FOR BANGING QUESTIONABLE MENFOLK!" 

The non-dave strilondes raced to the door to stop the screaming before it angered their elderly neighbor, only to realize Dave was absent and that this is what Aranea and Mituna were yelling about. "What?! Dave's in jail?" Roxy wailed. 

"For CP?!" Dirk also wailed. 

"For CP of Eridan!" Mituna corrected.

"And also my sister, who I guess people aren't as surprised to hear there's CP about." Aranea said with a bit of shade.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAA", Rose said loudly, unable to add anything productive to the discussion. 

"We have to do something!" Dirk screamed, "but I don't know what that thing is because it's possible my brother really made child pornography and is now being rightly punished!" 

"And also my brother may be a pervert." Mituna added, "but I am less surprised and always expected this only I thought he'd get busted for torrenting lolicon instead."

"And also my sister is in prison for fucking Cronus's gross greasy little brother. Which is bad and gross and we should stop talking and go save her like, immediately. Before she has time to get prison tattoos, which she will do literally immediately if we cannot intervene in time." Aranea was already walking to her car, and everyone followed while continuing to scream. The children screamed all the way to the county jail, which they had been incorrectly referring to as a prison. When everyone but Aranea reached the captive boys, the three of them zipped to the front of the men's drunk tank to plead for bail money. 

"SOMEONE GET MY MOM!!! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GO GET MY MOM!" Eridan screeched. 

Sollux waved quietly. Mituna waved back. "So you finally went to jail for child pornography." Mituna said solemnly. 

"What do you mean finally?" Sollux asked with a look of betrayal. 

"You know, all those lolicons on your computer." Mituna shrugged. "That's illegal, man." 

"Kanna Kamui is seven thousand years old, he's fine." The supervising officer said. 

"Oh. Woops. I'm sorry sollux." Mituna said. 

"I forgive you." Sollux said with a shrug. "Please get me out of prison." 

"Jail. It's just jail." Dave said. "can you guys give me some cigarettes to trade for stuff? I don't think they're letting me out. I need like uh... Honey buns probably? And cigarettes for sure."

"Dave, why do you need all that stuff?" Roxy asked.

"Are you trying to get prison tattoos like Vriska?" Dirk asked.

"AAAAAAAAA!" Rose continued to screech. 

"No I just need uh, things. There's a guy selling a crumpled up Arby's and and I don't have the internet in here so like you know, I might need it eventually, but he wants honey buns or some cigarettes." Dave gestured to the creep, who opened his trench coat to reveal numerous crumpled Arby's ads. 

"I am not funding your perverted lifestyle, you're already in like, so much trouble when Mom finds out." Dirk said. 

"We have worse problems than his mom, we're in fucking jail." Eridan said. "Let the man buy pictures of distorted sandwiches that remind him of the forbidden roast beef. And more importantly, go get my mom, like immediately. Please. The cops called her but she hasn't come and I'm so scared." He pleaded.

The strilondes and Mituna stared at eachother. "It's probably fine." Mituna said immediately." 

"I'm sure she's coming, she probably stopped for donuts to bribe the cops with or something." Sollux said, patting his shoulder. 

"Sollux, don't touch me, I'm in jail because you and Dave recorded me having sex and put me on pornhub and my mom probably went to Greece without me because all of her sons were fuckups and she just wants to meet a new man and start over." 

"I mean yeah, probably. I would." Dirk said. 

"That was really mean." Roxy said sadly. 

"And very true, I was trying to help and be nice but I think Eridan knows what's up." Mituna said. 

Sollux nodded in agreement. "You're not alone though, we were such fuckups our mom had a heart attack and died to get away from us. It's ok Eridan, single dads make due." 

"Eridan doesn't have a dad you jerk, he was a cannibal serial killer and he's like dead now? Probably? I don't know how the justice system works in Greece." Roxy said. Eridan began making a wildly ululating pitchy sound like his brain was overheating from the panic of being a jail orphan about to be booked for sex crimes.

"AAAAAA ARTEMIS! HELP US! I STARTED ARBITRARILY WORSHIPPING YOU AS RHE GODDESS OF LESBIANS FOR REAL WHEN HERMES SHOWED UP AND PROVED GODS ARE REAL AND ITS GOTTA PAY OFF SOMEHOW! FUCK!" Rose screeched. Hermes appeared instead of Artemis, because of course he did. 

"Everyone stop screaming, I have a hangover." He said. The entire jail went quiet. "as usual Artemis can't come, because I'm the only one who's supposed to actually come here." He continued, mumbling, "Just me. Some people didn't get that memo." He regained his previous volume, which was still quiet on account of his banging headache. "What's up, the fuck do you kids need?"

Rose cleared her throat and spoke softly, her voice hoarse from screaming all morning. "We need all our friends not to be in trouble for CP anymore. We've got Eridan here, and Sollux, my brother Dave, Vriska, whoever the fuck else went to that party? Who else was there, Dave?" 

"Uh, Gamzee, but his dad already picked him up, and we had John and Tavros but they pretended they didn't speak English and got picked up by ICE." Dave said, making an open gesture with his palm. "So uh, we need to rescue them from ICE before they get toilet water depression fever. Or sent to Mexico on accident." 

Hermes nodded, one hand over his eye to ease the light, which was too bright for a hung over person. He turned to the supervising cop. As he was very impatient, his eyes glowed red as he used his godly powers to make the stupid shit that comes out of his mouth seem like a convincing and well worded argument. "Prosecuting teenagers for cp is stupid, let them out and shred all the reports." 

The cop nodded. "I actually thought that on my own but now I'm going to go do that. Go home kiddos, try not to fuck anything for the next five years." He said, releasing the boys. 

"Instructions unclear, dick stuck in hand." Sollux replied as he left the cell. 

"I can't make promises." Eridan said. "I'll definitely do it again."

"I'm a good boy. I don't fuck anything, not even up." Dave said.

Aranea walked back to the group with Vriska, who already had prison tattoos. "Wow, it's amazing, they just randomly decided to let my sister go and shred the reports! Great stuff, let's all go to Denny's while I decompress and figure out what to tell my mom." She said, shaking violently from the emotional whiplash. 

"Yeah, I could eat." Roxy said, teetering his hand, palm down, side to side to indicate ambivalence.

"I hope you brought two cars. We won't all fit in one car, there's like ten of us." Vriska said. Aranea looked around, counting on her fingers. 

"Fuck. Dirk, hop in with me, everyone else start walking to Denny's." They did.


	8. Denny's is a modern vessel of debauchery and merriment

As the gang entered the Denny's, they immediately saw the Makara boys, Tavros and John eating with what appeared to be Tech N9ne trying to disguise his famous face with sunglasses and a hat. 

"Woah, shit guys, we don't had to saved Tavros!" Mituna screamed, his arms flailing excitedly. 

"Or John!" Rose said excitedly. 

"No, fuck John." Sollux said. "His mom called the cops on my brother for skateboarding near their house." 

"He was grinding on her flowerbeds. He did irreversible damage to our tulip tree." John said, slapping the empty table in front of him with an open palm. 

"Still fucking hella lame bro", Mituna said coldly. "Didnt anyone tell her about the stitches?" 

"Please, children, stop arguing. Sit down and I'll get everybody a grand slam. How did all you kids post bail so quickly?" Tech N9ne ordered and then asked. Gamzee growled at Dave from across the table, Dave's eyes narrowed behind his sunglasses.

"We didn't." Sollux said. "The cops all decided it was stupid to prosecute a bunch teenagers for filming the future school shooter with his fat oily girlfriend for a laugh and let us go." John and Tavros both got Faraway looks in their eyes as they realized they'd have been released from jail if they hadn't tried to get out of testifying by pretending they couldn't speak English. 

"Uhhhh..." Aranea, Eridan, Vriska and Roxy all said. 

"It's rude to call people fat." Rose said, before anyone stopped saying uhh.

"Vriska and Eridan are literally right here." Aranea said, gesturing. 

"You shouldn't bodyshame? Like, you especially?" Roxy said.

"I am literally right here." Eridan said. 

"Bold words coming from a skinnyfat gamer goblin with shark teeth, a potato for a brother, a mom who had a heart attack on purpose to escape her failures, and a chubbychaser dad hiding out in the IT department to avoid his trainwreck life. Come the fuck here, Sollux. It's tusslin' time." Vriska said, JoJo posing menacingly. 

"Naw, I gonna make you walk over here so I can watch you get out of breath before I kick your ass." Sollux said, making a beckoning gesture with his open palm. Sollux and Vriska proceeded to get into a limpwristed weeaboo slapfight. She shrieked as he targeted her fresh prison tattoos she received from a delinquent with a Jerry rigged motorized pen.

"Alright rest of the children!" Tech N9ne said cheerfully, "just ignore those two they'll get tired eventually, who wants a grand slam? It's the least I can do, knowing y'all nearly got in trouble over a silly fight between some boys and are about to get chewed the fuck out by ya mommas." The children piled into the booths to take the rapper up on his generous offer. Eridan began crying at the thought that his mother had abandoned him and run away to Greece to find a new dweeb and start over. Eventually, Sollux and Vriska wandered to the table, dazed, sweaty and disoriented. "Well kiddos, who won?" The horrorcore icon asked politely, as if he didn't already know. 

"Gravity I guess?" Sollux whined. Vriska merely panted open mouthed. 

"Alright then." The rapping clown replied. "Y'all two fill up with pancakes and ham so you won't starve when your momma don't feed you dinner over all the child pornography allegations, tween sex and prison tattoos. I am very supportive of, but also disappointed in you. Please start making better choices." 

Dirk and Aranea nodded. "You made very bad choices." Aranea said. Dirk gave a thumbs up, then flipped it to a thumbs down expressionlessly. Roxy nodded and drank his choccy milk.

Eridan wept over his hashed browns. Just as someone who hadn't witnessed his meltdown about his mom was on the verge of asking what was wrong, his mom burst into the restaurant looking around frantically. "ERI?!" she called out in panic. 

"Ma?!" He shreiked, bumping the table as he ran to hug his mother, who denied the embrace and slapped him across the face so hard that his glasses landed in an old man's ultimate omelette. Before he could speak, she pinched the cartilage of his ear and dragged him outside to yell at him for the acts of villainy that had caused her to arise from her depression nap to 28 missed calls from an increasingly concerned desk sergeant. 

"Huh. I guess only our mom was willing to have a heart attack and die to get away from us." Sollux said flatly. 

"Your mom didn't have a heart attack on purpose to get away from you guys, she ate shitty greasy food and smoked for years and the stress of Mituna's recovery plus her habit of smoking and eating more when she felt stressed gave her a heart attack and she actually wanted to live. It's neither of your faults." Kurloz moaned with irritation. 

"My boy is wise." A-aron said in support. 

"Naw she definitely died to get away from me. Sometimes I wish I died to get away from me." Mituna said sadly. 

"God you people are depressing." John sighed. "well, my dad texted me from the parking lot, everyone wave goodbye to my ass because he's going to knock it into next week." He said, rolling his eyes as he walked out. 

"John, your dad doesn't hit you. He is a soft, tender man." Gamzee said. 

"Yeah, he only play wrestles you, he's just gonna yell at you a lot." Vriska said.

"Please stop doing that thing where you take the thing I said and ruin it with the truth." John whined.

The other children's parents arrived one by one, yelled at them super loud and dragged them to the car, except for Dave's. The strilondes and the Makaras sat across from eachother blankly. As Tech N9ne prepared to speak, Dave held up his hand to stop him. "Its alright, my parents aren't coming. We literally haven't seen them in years." 

Gamzee nodded. The elder clowns understood. Ominous music began to play over the Denny's speakers. The room darkened. Gamzee's hair grew bigger and wilder. "It appears that there are no consequences for either of our actions, and we are free to act as we please." He said. 

"No." A-aron said, wetting his fingers in his water cup and flicking droplets into Gamzee's face. "That is not what we learned today." He insisted. 

But it was.


	9. The author commits rampant blasphemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fortunately, I am not a Christian. I am sorry, casual Christians who are here now. (no non-casual Christians got here. I am sure of that.)

"AGAIN!" Kankri shouted, "As I have stated, as the eldest here I am technically the man of the house, and I said no gods except for Jesus can be here. You all need to leave." Again, Hades tugged on Cronus, trying to drag him out as the other gods headed for the door. "Stop taking Cronus, I told you he's not one of you."

"He is, though". Ares said, gesturing halfheartedly, looking godly and majestic in his athletic shorts. "Either we leave and he comes with us, or we don't leave." 

Karkat crunched his slightly burnt popcorn in the corner as he beheld this spectacle for the fourth time that day. "NO", Kankri asserted with immense frustration.

"He's coming with us, dude." Hades repeated as he tried to yank Cronus unceremoniously out the front door. "We leave together or your house isn't clear of gods other than Jesus. Cronus is a Greco-Roman diety like the rest of us."

"THAT'S LITERALLY JUST HIS NAME!" Kankri screamed, tugging at his hair. "HIS YAYA NAMED HIM THAT WHILE HIS MOM WAS LOST IN THE SAUCE RIGHT AFTER DELIVERY, BECAUSE SHE'S A PAGAN LUNATIC WHO SWEARS SHE SLEEPS WITH HERMES." 

"Hey! Hey, calm down." Hermes urged, arriving without warning. "She's not crazy, she actually slept with me. I mean like, if she says current tense she's lost it, I'm not into that Harold and Maude shit. I might be thousands of years old, but I'm young by deity standards, ok? But we really slept together, Eridan's my grandson actually, which is why I'm here."

Kankri screamed intensely. Karkat yelled over him, barely comprehensible due to the noise, "Eridan's a demigod? He's such a nerd" he asked, his voice failing to communicate his incredulity due to the volume he had to attain to overcome Kankri's mighty bellow. 

"Yeah." Hermes shrugged. "Lots of people are, no big deal."

"What about the Percy Jackson kids?" Karkat asked. 

"Some of them, probably. Like, a bunch of us won't get married because our parent's relationship was hella unhealthy so we just wander around and bang."

"Wow, gross." Karkat said without explaining his sentiments, as Hades finally dragged Cronus over the threshold thanks to the door-frame molding he'd clung to ripping loose with an audible creak. 

"HADES, LET GO." Kankri yelled. "HE WANTS TO STAY IN."

"AUUUUGH! FUCKING STOP I HAVE AN ANSWER TO THIS PROBLEM, JUST LET THE FUCK GO!" Cronus hollered. Curios, Hades released his grasp. In a flash, Cronus was suddenly dressed in stained, horrible stinking filthy robes, bleeding from several places and wearing a crown of thorns atop his head. "Alright it's me, Oily Josh, back from my adventures in ancient Rome. I'm allowed in the house, stop fucking touching me kid." He said, stepping back inside Kankri's house as everyone stared on in disbelief.

"I'm sorry, what?" Kankri asked. 

"Yeah, It's me, Oily J, leader of the greasy boys himself. I taught the whole ancient Roman empire the two big rules of being nice and not being a prick about money so they nailed me to a tree. That was probably more about my signature hairstyle though, I got my nickname for a reason. The greasy boys are still out there, probably, in the past. So they're dead. They're all dead now." He said, a hollow look in his eyes. "Never timetravel, you make friends, and then you go to the future and they're all dead." Kankri began to wibble. Karkat dropped his popcorn.

"Dude, what the fuck?" Hades asked.

"Yeah dude, that was not cool". Hermes asserted. 

"What? I fulfilled the requirements, I'm Jesus now so I'm allowed in the house and you're not. I can stay and you can go and there's no problem."

"Bro, look how upset you made him." Ares said, gesturing. Kankri, closed off, was holding his arms to his body.

"Yeah you are like way less invited to our house now." Karkat said. "Cronus, go wait outside and I'll take all your shit to the van. I'm so fucking glad this didn't happen until after I gave up on religion, holy fuck. I'm actually atheist now? But not in the sense that I don't think you guys exist, like, i just don't believe in you. Not in the way that I don't believe in Santa Clause, but in the way that Mituna's dad doesn't believe in him." 

"But I explicitly did this so I would be allowed in the house. I don't understand." Cronus wibbled.

"You ruined my brother's religion. He thought Jesus was a good guy worth emulating." Karkat snapped as Kankri curled into the fetal position with his back against the nearest wall.

"I am worth emulating! I told everyone that being a dick about money is wrong and that they should be nice to each-other."

"This technically makes all Jesus's wild public outbursts make sense." Kankri droned, detached, in a near-whisper. 

"Yeah I beat the fuck out of some bankers and threw a shitfit about figs, it's true. Nothing about me changed! Just the setting. I'm honestly surprised they got those parts right with how much they changed in that novel they wrote about me and stapled to the Torah. See? I'm allowed in the house now, you know it was me."

"Get out." Karkat said. He looked to the other deities. "Gentlemen, please remove Cronus from our humble abode. And also get out, my brother is having a fit now. As I remember, you came for Cronus, to talk to him about getting Eridan out of trouble."

"It's OK, I got Eridan out of trouble." Hermes said with a thumbs up. "I left while you were all arguing and nobody noticed."

"Oh. Well just get the fuck out then! Let the man have a nervous breakdown in peace." Karkat said with a clap of his hands.

"Get out." Kankri echoed. So out they went, the assembled men carrying Cronus as he whimpered in shock. They all walked to the driveway, depositing him next to his van.

"You have to go back." Ares observed.

"Yeah, I gotta get back inside that house, my fiance's in there and he's having some kind of mental breakdown."

"No, I meant to Ancient Rome, I read the book. The Greasy boys have to see you three days later or you didn't do the time thing right. They're not supposed to be able to recognize you, which I assume means you have to shower and shave." Ares said, picking up the hose.

"He's right." Hades said. The two sprayed him down with the hose, cut his hair and shaved his face as Karkat brought all of Cronus's stuff out to his van in a trashbag. As Cronus sat in his failure to understand what he'd done, they stripped his filthy, stained robes and dressed him in some nice clothes. 

"Alright Cronus, finish it, go tell the greasy boys you're coming back at the end of the world." Ares said with a chuckle.

"Yeah, go on buddy, finish up forming a major world religion, you already went this far."

"Technically I can do that whenever I want, I don't have to do it now." Cronus said. "Besides, I'm not going to lie to them, it isn't the end of the world yet." Just as he said that, a swarm of meteors glitched back into the sky. Everyone turned their gaze to the heavens and screamed. He phased quickly out of, and then back into sight. "Alright guys, you got me, It's the end of the world and I'm back, I guess."

"Didn't you promise you'd save all the Christians or something right now?" Hades asked without looking at him. 

"No? How would I even do something like that. You guys can stop now, that was a good prank and technically made me honest, that's enough." Cronus insisted.

"We didn't do this." Hades said. "None of us can actually do this, it's not us." 

"Oh." Cronus moaned. "We're going to die then."

"Uhhh, Well, your human body is." Thanatos said, the first he'd spoken since Ares brought him back specifically so he could threaten to fuck him on Kankri's bed. "Back to prison you go. Come along." He said, gesturing toward himself awkwardly. The meteors suddenly vanished again as soon as they'd appear, glitching back out to leave a blue, partly cloudy summer sky. "Oh, or not. Carry on with your activities."


End file.
